And, although I am not that interested in that, I was wondering why the preference for LXDE over fluxbox. It seems that since fluxbox already comes with aptosid, it would be easier to make a light weight version with it...

For LXDE we have some people who want to work on it. For fluxbox not.
And fluxbox is shipped mostly because it is so lightweight that it fits on the iso and can be used in case of major breakage of KDE (or whatever the default environment is).

Beside that: We want an aptosid + dwm - flavor!

_________________MfG. DonKult
"I never make stupid mistakes. Only very, very clever ones." ~ The Doctor

I'd also very much appreciate a CLI installer. It would be a great generic tool that would satisfy any number of users' unique setup requirements:

Server installations could be kept clean of unnecessary GUI baggage

LXDE lovers could install LXDE

Openbox lovers could install Openbox

Fluxbox lovers could install Fluxbox

GNOME lovers could install GNOME

Users who don't know how to type apt-get install openbox could install Ubuntu

What's more, there wouldn't be any 'extra' packages on a CLI version that the devs would have to beautify into yet another custom desktop environment. An LXDE version would be all well and good, but it only pleases people who want LXDE. A CLI version could be molded by the user into whatever the user wants - without adding in yet another component that most users won't want.

Irfan

Post subject:Posted: 07.02.2011, 11:42

Joined: 2011-01-01
Posts: 4
Location: Pakistan
Status: Offline

Nice generalized approach, nonoitall.

dpt

Post subject:Posted: 07.02.2011, 13:38

Joined: 2010-09-11
Posts: 281
Location: New Delhi
Status: Offline

I also want a minimal distro which can be built as per my requirement or run on my P100 with 32 MB RAM, if the machine
is not yet disposed.
But I shall- purely my personal way with absolutely no offense meant, then start with raw Debian, or maybe look at slh
kernels when I get educated well in this, understand well what is involved and find the time.

For running a fast OS that serves most of my purpose, and learning the basic bits needed by a beginner, aptosid kde-lite
is good enough for me and I guess that XFCE exists and LXDE is on its way.

Being a hardware-designer and programmer myself in embedded area (a reason for short of time for Linux), I feel that it is difficult(practically impossible) for the limited developers to go for and support a variety of flavors. Especially in a rapid changing environment.
For those who wish to play with aptosid with no limits, there is a sidux-underground somewhere, I do not know if they have changed the name.
Or perhaps better, here if possible.

Just my personal opinion and honestly no offense meant to anyone. The way I would go.

Thanks.
dpt

_________________In a lunatic asylum, everyone thinks that he is the doctor.

slh

Post subject:Posted: 07.02.2011, 15:28

Joined: 2010-08-25
Posts: 779

Status: Offline

Again, there will be no cli-only release - aptosid simply isn't the right tool for that. Neither will there be an inflation of differently tweaked "minimal" window managers, we neither have the development force nor hosting infrastructure for that.

Talking about "P100 with 32 MB", this isn't possible either - neither with aptosid, nor using Debian plain.

Aptosid's kernel hard-depends on the full scope of the i686 instruction set (a Pentium-1 is most importantly missing the CMOV instruction, among others - so our unchanged kernel cannot boot on i586 hardware), but while the kernel could be changed (but is not going to be, for aptosid), there is a bigger problem.

Debian lenny's installer required at least ~40 MB to work (partman in particular). While I'm not sure about squeeze's exact memory requirements for installing, it's safe to assume that it won't work with less memory than lenny; the newly introduced graphical installer variant needs even more memory.

Looking at the live CD approach, you do have a considerable memory overhead for the live system. A CD/ DVD, and therefore the iso9660 filesystem, is read-only, but several places like /var/, /tmp/ and usually also /etc/ must be writable for booting and the running system. The only way to accomplish this, is by diverting all writes to tmpfs (== in RAM) or ramfs - traditionally this has been implemented by symlink farms, "recently" the trend has gone to unioning filesystems (initially unionfs, today aufs2.1 is the preferred approach, VFS based union mounts might be ahead; mini_fo is used on many embedded systems) or other overlay methods like devmapper (Fedora) or fuse based approaches (OpenSuSE). While the actual minimum size of this overhead depends on the started services, it's around 40-50 MB minimum, even without X and a running desktop environment and easily twice that once you start common X11 applications (think browser cache and similar uses). Again, these figures merely talked about the overhead for running a contemporary live CD, past experience tells me that 96 MB total RAM size are likely the lowest possible limit for a cli-only live CD using modern techniques.

Of course there is a way to accomplish this anyways, as embedded devices like routers prove every day, but only if the target system isn't approached like a universal desktop computer, but like an embedded system - hand tweaked for a specific task and without much flexibility in regards to hotpluggable hardware or concurrently running, even less contemporary, applications.

However, does this really make sense in practice?
Personally I don't think so for the system in question, because size, noise and power consumption don't really match performance and I/O- or network throughput of cheap (starting around 15-20 EUR) embedded devices, like routers. But routers are a good/ cheap example for embedded devices...

If we look at a OpenWrt and the routers it supports, you quickly notice that most routers with 11/ 54 MBit/s wlan are mips based and range between 133 MHz and 266 MHz clock speed, with 4-8 MB flash (permanent storage) and 16-32 MB RAM. For 802.11n capable routers, these system specs generally rise to 400-680 MHz clock speed, 4-8 MB flash and 32-64 MB RAM. Even if you really start to cut corners (no web-gui, not supported by OpenWrt - but technically "possible"), you can't go below 2 MB flash and 8 MB RAM with contemporary embedded - non-X - linux systems, while some propietary embedded operating systems might still allow this. The lower end specimens of these mips based devices roughly sport a similar integer (program execution) performance like your p100, while at least the newer 802.11n capable ones are significantly faster - only for floating point (multimedia, graphics, scientific calculations) operations your p100 will manage to beat them. However if you consider memory-, I/O and networking throughput, today's embedded routers have a clear advantage over original pentium systems, let alone that many higher end routers (starting around ~50 EUR) support one or two USB 2.0 ports. All that using 5-10 watts, compared to >>40-80 watts for your pentium. If you look at consumer NAS systems or other embedded systems (like plug computing), you generally end up with 680 MHz, 800 MHz or mostly 1.2 GHz arm or mips and rarely some powerpc systems, usually equipped with 512 MB RAM (older devices using 256 MB, or even down to 128 MB RAM), which definitely beat your p100 easily around the 100 bucks mark. Heck, even today's smartphones (including the not so smart ones) will catch your pants down.

At some point, it really doesn't make sense to keep ancient hardware on artificial life support.

dpt

Post subject:Posted: 07.02.2011, 16:21

Joined: 2010-09-11
Posts: 281
Location: New Delhi
Status: Offline

@slh,

The reference to P100 was actually a remark in a lighter mood for those who want to go for minimalistic stuff. It actually, was thrown long time back.
Its only use, during the last days was to use assemblers and download files to micro-controllers. With Win98 and no/ broken cooling fan. How I used it like that for a few months is a miracle. The only low-end stuff I have now is an desktop with AMD sempron 2500+ (64-bit) that has replaced the other antique.

I am actually looking for ARM based boards for my next products, (the cheaper ones will run WinCE not Android), and I plan embedded Linux.
Here are some boards (saw some nice reports somewhere). If you find some time and give a few hints ( as above on P100 etc) on the boards/ ARM processors or the OS, I shall highly appreciate.

I never was for CLI nor will be. During my distro-hopping days, I have tested a few,
none for more than 10 minutes. Ubuntu was my first distro, got familiar in a few months
and no distro-hopping after aptosid (then sidux). I love it and I love the forums too. There are highly
competent persons here, I feel at home.

As said in my post later, it was said in a light mood as a humorous sarcasm for those looking for CLI.
How can I as I am moving to TFT diplays from alphanumeric in my products with Graphics.

8 years of Mechanical/Electrical,8 years precision anolog instrumentation, 15 years of assembly coding- for C51 core I write now as fast as I can type as I have a huge set of libraries, time to move to embedded Linux.

For Android there is a basic4Android in Israel, should be useful for fast programming in Tablets for commercial
work. It is pretty cheap too, about $99 only. For lighter hardware there is WINCE (I would prefer to keep off
from it) and basic4ppc to write applications.

Your link should be quite useful-I was aware of it. I do not want heavily priced commercial stuff and want to upgrade myself in the process. Does not take long to know the processor architectures, and all high level languages are very
similar.

Thanks again.

dpt

_________________In a lunatic asylum, everyone thinks that he is the doctor.

slh

Post subject:Posted: 07.02.2011, 19:44

Joined: 2010-08-25
Posts: 779

Status: Offline

dpt, there is no generic answer to your question, it depends a lot on what you actually want to do with your system.

Looking at the prices - and accounting the potentially required peripherals into the expectable power consumption as well - I wouldn't disregard single voltage Intel Atom/ Intel graphics or AMD Fusion mainboards, coupled with an 80+ notebook PSU, either. Yes, x86 systems are "boring", but given that they're produced in bulk volumes, they're often much cheaper to obtain and offer pretty reasonable performance/watt ratios (like fanless operations at <18>=400 MHz mips, >= 32 MB RAM, 4-8 MB flash + 1-2 USB 2.0 ports for additional storage) for your task, which ranges for one third up to half the quoted prices - and offers case, wlan and a managed 5 port for "free".

Personally I'm pretty interested in arm systems, but haven't found a reasonable combination of performance and features for a sane price yet.

slh

Post subject:Posted: 07.02.2011, 19:45

Joined: 2010-08-25
Posts: 779

Status: Offline

dpt, there is no generic answer to your question, it depends a lot on what you actually want to do with your system.

Looking at the prices - and accounting the potentially required peripherals into the expectable power consumption as well - I wouldn't disregard single voltage Intel Atom/ Intel graphics or AMD Fusion mainboards, coupled with an 80+ notebook PSU, either. Yes, x86 systems are "boring", but given that they're produced in bulk volumes, they're often much cheaper to obtain and offer pretty reasonable performance/watt ratios (like fanless operations at less than 18 watts idle and not exceeding 30 watts under load).

Considering the systems specs you quoted from your linked source, you seem to be particularly interested in low-end devices. If that is indeed the case, it might make more sense to "abuse" an OpenWrt compatible router with something like >=400 MHz mips, >= 32 MB RAM, 4-8 MB flash and 1-2 USB 2.0 ports for additional storage for your task, which ranges for one third up to half the quoted prices - and offers case, wlan and a managed 5 port for "free".

Personally I'm pretty interested in arm systems, but haven't found a reasonable combination of performance and features for a sane price yet.

belze

Post subject:Posted: 07.02.2011, 20:02

Joined: 2010-09-13
Posts: 100

Status: Offline

dear devs, I read that there won't be a minimal aptosid image, so I won't cry in order to get it, anyway, let me pose few questions. I imagine myself very happy to get a minimal aptosid iso in order to install the base system and - i suppose - a very simple window manager such as fluxbox. <- i don't really care
From this simple base system i would be able to install a metapackage - example - to get aptosid's kde xfce o whatelse, or just my limitated set of applications.
This approach has some good points:
- fast to install (i know aptosid is already very fast!)
- fast to upgrade (expecially if installed some time after release)
- fast to customize (on a laptop i don't want / need a full set of application included in kde-lite or simply i use fluxbox or other simply WM)
- it is better to have a very simple base system where i can add my favourite packages than a kde-lite system whwre i have to remove all the packages i don't want...

I don't think about server, but just for my laptop or dektop needs.
Are my needs so heretic?
thanks in advice for you time!

slh

Post subject:Posted: 07.02.2011, 20:21

Joined: 2010-08-25
Posts: 779

Status: Offline

belze, that's unfortunately not going to happen - on the one hand we're not going to release such a "minimal aptosid iso" (ignoring a potential light LXDE release for a moment, which might indeed happen, but is not in a releasable state by any means, yet), on the other hand we tried such an approach (similar, but no the same) with "install-meta" long time ago. This attempt has been proven simply not to be maintainable long term in a vibrantly changing suite like Debian unstable, because no maintainer is able to check the package lists for each and every "meta package" (however this might be defined) every few days, while sid does change four times a day and may even be broken occasionally (like right now). However the manifests of each released ISO are distributed right next to the ISO on every download mirror, which tell you exactly which packages are installed on which ISO.

dpt

Post subject:Posted: 07.02.2011, 20:43

Joined: 2010-09-11
Posts: 281
Location: New Delhi
Status: Offline

I have been surfing for boards for quite some time, and I too am yet to find something reasonable at a sane price. In fact the link given has, as I see with my limited knowledge, perhaps the best pricing as they are based in china.
I had seen one or two Intel stuff, no AMD yet, I will check. Yes, X86 is not much exciting.

The products I have in mind shall not be consmer items, they will be like Industrial Data-Loggers and Cash-Registers. Can not use Tablet-PCs - those can be useful for jobs like survey ( I have someone asking but I am not sure if there will be margins there even if sold) but with net-books so cheap, it does not look very attractive proposition.

I will take a look at OpenWrt compatible routers as suggested by you. I should be able to use a keyboard,preferably a small qwerty, a few USB ports, LAN/Wifi, GPRS/EDGE/3G modem for connecting to servers and a minimum 5.6 LCD. And earn some decent amount at the earliest to live well.

I will keep you informed as and when I get information and my search on ARM based boards shall continue. It will help me too and it is not very exciting to work alone.

Thanks slh. It is 2 AM here, I need to sleep.

EDIT: Typo correction.

_________________In a lunatic asylum, everyone thinks that he is the doctor.